Friday, September 2, 2016

This morning Peggy Noonan shared an epiphany she had
watching Hillary deliver a speech in New Hampshire. I don't think that it explains
very much, but I like it anyway:

If she
weren’t here, she’d be in an empty house in Chappaqua, N.Y., the focus of no
eyes—not important, not glamorous, no aides or staffers. I thought: She needs to run, it’s this or
reruns on Bravo. I thought: This is why you pick up that there is no
overarching purpose, theme or mission to her candidacy—because there isn’t.
There is only her need—not to be powerless, not to be away from the center.
It’s not The America Project, it’s The Hillary Project.

From this Noonan concludes that Hillary is the depression
candidate. She adds that Trump is the anxiety candidate. By her slightly
dubious version of these psycho categories she means that Hillary is the
same old thing, a tired remnant of yesterday. And that the Donald is the new kid,
the one who has no qualifications or experience, whose every appearance makes
you afraid of what he is going to say and whose possible presidency makes you dread
the future.

She concludes that Mr. Anxiety has an advantage over Ms.
Depression because anxiety is a more awake state. There is some truth to that.
When you are depressed you have pretty much given up and when you are anxious
you are fearing what’s coming next.

Of course, when you are anxious you are not optimistic about
what the next day will bring. You might be anxious to greet the new day, but as
the term is used in psychiatry, it means that you are awaiting punishment for a
crime of word, thought or deed. Raskolnikov was anxious. He was not depressed.

And, to be fair, when you are depressed you might very well
throw tantrums, the better to buck up your flagging self-esteem. Freud once
noted that depression was anger turned against yourself. He was wrong about
that—depression is learned helplessness—but he pointed to the fact that people
who are depressed often try to cure their condition by striking out in
anger. The correct term would be impotent rage, because it’s better to be
enraged and to hide your impotence than to show the world that you are
helpless.

Take this as a cautionary note: one should be careful using grand
psychiatric categories.

As for the rationale behind the Hillary candidacy, I find it
intriguing that Noonan pictures Hillary alone in her house in Chappaqua,
watching television. That is, without a husband and without Huma. But, now that
Huma is going to be single, perhaps she can move in to Hillary’s place in
Chappaqua, to keep her company. As of now, it appears that Hillary and Huma
share a suite when they travel for the campaign. Hillary is effectively never
alone. Her shadow is always there.

If I may disagree with Noonan, I think that Hillary has a “darker
purpose.” She is running in order to vindicate and validate her life. She
entered into a marital arrangement with Bill Clinton in order to advance
herself, to gain power for herself and to advance the cause of feminism. When you
sell out at that level, you are sorely
in need of a large payoff.

Hillary’s main qualification for the job is that she is female.
She is yet another in a string of unqualified candidates who owe their jobs to
affirmation action and diversity quotas. She has never really gotten any of her
big jobs on her own. If her name were not Clinton she would have been working
for some government agency or NGO trying to save the world.

Hillary’s candidacy is cultural politics at its worst.

Noonan suggests that Hillary is depression because you know
what you are going to get. If you imagine that you are going to get Bill
Clinton, think again. The irony here is that the great champion of women’s
rights and female empowerment is riding her husband’s coattails. And this
suggests that she cannot possibly run the country or the government on her own.
Hillary’s resume and much of her life looks, to most Americans, completely
fraudulent. She has the advantage of having an army of eunuchs who are willing
to lie for her.

These facts make the email scandal salient, an overt
expression of something that people have suspected all along. I think that most
people are more worried about putting a fraud like Hillary, someone whose claim
to be strong and powerful is pure posturing, into a position where her manifest
weakness will invite aggressors.

Hillary’s surrogates keep saying that she is tough enough
for the presidency. They thought the same of Barack Obama, one of the weakest
presidents in memory. Foreign leaders never respected Obama and they surely do
not respect Hillary.

And that spells a general anxiety about the nation’s
prospects. Putting the military in the hands of someone who is weak and ineffectual—we’ve
done that already. How is it working out?

So, I would say that Hillary generates more anxiety than
Trump. It may be the case and it is almost surely the case that Trump does not
possess anything remotely resembling a qualification for the office of
president. Noonan herself debunks the comparison between Trump’s trip to Mexico
and Nixon’s trip to China.

She wrote:

A Trump
supporter told/spun me that it was a Nixon-to-China moment, which it was not.
Nixon knew exactly what he was doing and why, the diplomacy of it had been long
and secretly arranged, and it wasn’t driven by immediate political need but by
America’s strategic requirements.

And yet, Trump did go to Mexico. Hillary did not. Trump
traveled to Lousiana, Hillary did not. Trump puts himself out there in front of
the press. Hillary refuses to do a press conference.

Trump would be foolish if he was not afraid of winning a job
he is unqualified for, but he is looking a lot less afraid than the dowager
empress of Chappaqua.

Hillary is pretending to be confident and in command. But, by
avoiding all difficult situations she is looking like a coward. And that makes
people anxious.

Surely, Trump is more bluster than courage, but, compared
with the feckless Hillary and our current coward-in-chief, he looks like a
tower of strength. Thus, as a cure for anxiety.

8 comments:

Anonymous
said...

She entered into a marital arrangement with Bill Clinton in order to advance herself, to gain power for herself and to advance the cause of feminism. When you sell out at that level, you are sorely in need of a large payoff.

One of the more astute observations I've read about her in quite some time.

Some of the women that are the most loyal to Hillary are fake feminists themselves. The most strident ones are also dependent on their husbands income. They have the time to puff themselves up about their brilliance and complain about being a woman all at the same time. Of course they also berate their patient husbands at the drop of a hat.If this election weren't so serious it would be comical.

I've always admired the First Civil Union. Hillaree! never was up to Bill's high standards, as described in Confederate Railroad's hit song...

https://youtu.be/vfXs0m32A8E

But I've admired her vibrant [ahem] fantasy life, from the Half-Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, to dodging sniper fire, to the presence of Chelsea (her love-child with Kermit the Frog) being present at the WTC.

The more I read about politics, the more it seems like everyone simply sees what they want to see.

I'm anxious about the future, but Trump doesn't ease my anxiety. Hillary is a status quo candidate, which also doesn't ease my anxiety, especially her interest in foreign interventionism.

Ultimately I don't know what this country needs, and I'm willing to accept we've been on a 40 year wrong path. We had our chance to ween ourselves off fossil fuels, and like Trump's bluster, we doubled-down on that path, and we made lots of great toys, but nothing that tells us how to live on less energy, just how to live well on more debt.

How does any president change any of that? Carter tried with his "Crisis of confidence" and Ronald Reagan told us its morning in American, and people like positive delusions that keep all benefits in the present and all costs into the future. So it seems like we have a 40-year unwinding ahead.

But that's all just me, and maybe large things never fail because we can always make them into a larger failure, like the gambler who plays double-or-nothing, and doubles his bet every time he loses a round. It's guaranteed winning strategy, as long as you never break the bank, or exceed the number of atoms in the universe.

The whole thing is good analysis, but this is the conclusion:"Trump’s supporters propose to not be held down any longer by a regimen of enforced brooding over past sins – a regimen that never reaches an end-state. This isn’t about perpetuating injustice. It’s about having hope and a future, which no one can have who won’t let go of the past. That truth of human life constrains politics and government, as much as it does everything else. Politics has no power to transcend it.

If you don’t like Trump’s take on the end-states for a good future, come up with your own. But don’t tell people their only options are to choose between depression and anxiety. They’ll just reject your premises and do something else. And they’ll be right to."

There are two ways to wean ourselves off fossil fuels: go Nuclear, or starve a goodly percentage of us. Wind and solar can't operate around to clock. Hydro can, but I've read that Oregon does not consider its dams "renewable". If we keep saying "You Can't Do That", then starvation looks likelier.